On vacation last week I took a couple of books hoping to have time to finish at least one of them.  Since I was already a couple of chapters into “Churched” by Matthew Turner I decided to start with it.  Reading this book is like reading the story of my life growing up in the fundamental baptist regime.  Never have I read a book that I could relate so closely to or that I actually laughed out loud while I was reading.  If you have a chance you really should pick up a copy of this and give it a read.

Now I am on to reading “Tribes” by Seth Godin.  This is a complete switch from “Churched” but is something that is practical to my life now.  I am trying to finish this book up by the end of the week.  Maybe someday I will write a book.  My brother and I have even tossed around a title, “Oh Crap!  We Got the Deal… Now What”.

Yesterday JR, Todd, and I ran an official half marathon in Snellville.  The race is called, “Run the Reagan”.  David, an old college roomate also joined us for this race.  This was part of our marathon training to get used to the race setting before the full marathon.

It all started well.  I made it to the turnaround half-way through the race in just under 1 hour.  I wanted to finish in under 2:00 hours so I was on track.  At mile 10 or so I crashed.  The second half of the race took me 1 hour and 7 minutes.  The 9:15 average mile I wanted ended up being 9:42 and my final time was 2:06:57.

At least I finished it.  I have the t-shirt and finisher medal to prove it too.  The Gwinnett Daily Post managed to catch a picture of JR at the finish line.  Todd and I must’ve been ghosts.  I’m gonna take the week off and then get back to training for the full marathon next Saturday.

I’m sorry for driving the speed limit this morning.  I’m sorry that Cobb County drops the speed limit to 35 miles per hour when the same road in Paulding county is 45 miles per hour.  I’m sorry if I made you late getting to whatever emergency had you riding my bumper and swerving back and forth like a NASCAR driver trying to find a way around.

However, I would like to remind you why you bought that shiny, new, red Toyota Prius… to save the environment.  I’d like to remind you that at speeds under 40 miles per hour the Prius runs on its battery so that it is not consuming fuel.  I’d like to remind you that rapidly accelerating to get around the guy driving his gas-hogging Ford Explorer at the speed limit expends more fuel than driving at a constant speed and requires your Prius to kick the engine on.

I hope you made it wherever your were going on time.  I am not upset or angry.  I just find it ironic.  I am thinking I may go cut down a tree in your honor.

Sincerly,

The guy in the white Ford Explorer

Finished the second of the 15 mile long runs today. I was cruising right along until about mile 12.75 when I hit The Wall. It was weird. I think it was mostly mental because my body felt fine I just had to stop and walk. I was running alone so that made it a little harder. I finished the 15 miles in 2:24:02 which is a 9:36 average mile. Not too bad considering the final 2 miles took 22 minutes by themselves. I am running an official half marathon next week. I have set my goal at 1:59:00 which is a 9:06 per mile pace. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I have been thinking about this for several days now since the photo of Michael Phelps with the Marijuana pipe surfaced.  I was impressed that rather than pull the President Clinton approach of saying, “I didn’t inhale” or the Michael Vick approach of, “I didn’t do it” he came right out and apologized.  He didn’t try to pass the blame, make excuses, or claim he didn’t do it.  He simply said he was sorry and that he made a mistake.  Resfreshing in light of the typical way things like this are handled by celebrities.  I think Dara Torres summed it up well, “he didn’t let the USA down at the games, so we shouldn’t let him down.”

On another unrelated note.  I opened a new jar of peanut butter this morning.  For the first time ever I found myself looking for the address of the manaufacturer to see if it was a Georgia (or Texas) address.  There is no address for the manufacturer just the distributor.  I think the FDA should require the manufacturer’s name and address to be printed on all food labels in the future.  Hopefully the peanut butter is safe because I ate some!